The Ivory-billed Woodpecker, a.k.a. the lord-god-king-bird is the largest
of its species and is thought to be extinct. It is a massive 2 foot tall bird
with a 3-foot wingspan, whose rarity and beauty proved too irresistible to
hunters who blasted them out of existence as fast as they could find them.
By the mid 1960s they were becoming harder and harder to find and
assumed to be gone for good. But when stories of a giant woodpecker and
a 3-second-long video of an alleged IBW emerged from an Arkansas swamp,
the hunt was back on—this time lead by scientists, camera crews and
hardcore birders. The swamp was a tiny sliver of habitat where a tiny sliver
of hope existed for the survival of this animal. In the painting, I wanted to
create a sense of mystery but also isolation and compression. Is he being
spotted or is he being excised from his environment? Its unclear. To me,
the white border looks like it was drawn by the clumsy hand of a man who
foolishly thinks that nature gives two shits about his desires or his apologies.